Boston Linux & Unix (BLU) Home | Calendar | Mail Lists | List Archives | Desktop SIG | Hardware Hacking SIG
Wiki | Flickr | PicasaWeb | Video | Maps & Directions | Installfests | Keysignings
Linux Cafe | Meeting Notes | Blog | Linux Links | Bling | About BLU

BLU Discuss list archive


[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Wipro's Azim Premji - 'The man who wants to take your jobs'



First -- I am dissappointed to hear that things are still as bad as they 
were two or three years ago in the American IT sector as most of you claim 
they are. I was becoming more optimistic since I started seeing lots of 
Help Wanted signs in what are traditional lower-wage service jobs (at 
least in Boston, MA)...the Starbuck barista jobs, the convenience store 
jobs. I saw this phase in the 80's, I saw this during the boom times of 
the 90's , and I thought I was seeing it again. To me, it serves as an 
ecomonic indicator those persons normally holding such jobs are finding 
better ones; the effect being mirrored in higher-echelon jobs. Tell me 
your stories, I really do want to hear them! Are things THAT bad for 
you???

But during a period of renewed growth there always seems to be some job 
sector that pays the price...in the 80's it was manufacturing, in the 
(early) 90's it was traditional engineering jobs tied to military industry 
(a la post Cold War spending cuts), banking got nailed as well, and now it 
seems that the IT/software engineering sector is paying the price. These 
always seem to be followed by some type of fervor or hype in that 
sector...and increased focus if you will. Manufacturing suffered during 
and after the 70's as product manger's lost focus, started investing their 
budgets in the stock/bond markets (strong bond markets due to high 
interest rates I believe) (!), got lazy, and failed to innovate. The 80's 
saw intense, pork belly military spending during the Reagan Years (Star 
Wars program, Seargent York program, B1, B2 Bombers?) and the 
Savings&Loan/Wallstreet scandals. The mid/late 90's saw the IT/dotcom 
advertising hype campaigns, the Y2K buzz, and their subsequent downfall. 

The moral of the story: beware the bandwagon??? The market will seek 
equilibrium no matter what. English majors do C++ coding for $70,000 right 
out of college? Theater majors making $65000 doing straight HTML? 
Certificate factories? No profits? Unsustainable!!! Beware when the Demand 
curve shifts to the right unexpectedly! Massive military contracts for 
manufacturing during WWII brought massive job creation; when those 
contracts and their stimulating effects dried up after the war, the U.S. 
had several recessions. Y2K was the WWII for a good chunk of the IT 
industry. But the dotcom crash excascerbated the effects in many ways I 
feel. Investors big and small got burned, were infuriated that their money 
was wasted on parties and grand pianos in the lobbies of dotcoms, those 
investors influence corporate boards, corporate boards look to appease 
investors and make bigger bonuses for themselves, corporate boards make 
hiring decisions, play golf with the politicians, subsequently, more 
outsourcing, more H1B's.   It just sucks for those of us in IT who enjoy 
the discipline, who expected to have good, healthy careers in the field. 
We get to pay the price for the hype. A few bad apples spoil the bunch...

This is why I don't tell people to go into Biotech/Healthcare. Or rather, 
I wouldn't want to be there in five years. The retiring Baby Boomers will 
spur "the next big thing" at the end of this decade. Great near term 
growth to be had for sure, but I wouldn't build a 30 year career on it 
unless your really like it. 

I do not think legislature is the answer. Legislature is why we still have 
lots and lots of H1B's coming over. Legislature is SLOW and has too many 
hands in the proverbial cookie jar. Markets move faster than politicians 
do (which is why we have the Federal Reserve system, BTW).

American IT workers do not yet have a strong common voice in Washington. 
Companies in IT do (especially after the Microsft Antitrust case, where 
most probably realized the value of good lobbying), but IT workers do not. 
Having said that, I do not want to see IT workers unionize. It devalues 
the job and inhibits innovation. We DO need a massive advertising campaign 
waged against the WalMart's ("Sprawlmart") and temp agencies of the world 
. We do need to take up arms with groups like Adbusters(consumption), 
urban planning organizations(sprawl), Amnesty International (slave 
labor/worker rights),  etc. etc. We have to show people that there is a 
human toll when you make and sell $50 DVD players. We have to make it 
possible for citizens of developing countries to demand more for 
themselves, to better their own lives!!! But beware -- how many people 
will sympathize with you if you lost your $80,000/year job and can't find 
another one? Yes, that is what your experience level should be paying you, 
but will someone working at a WalMart understand your point of view? Okay, 
you will if you now have to take a job at Walmart to feed your family 
after losing that $80000 job. 

When we talk about quality of life, we must compare ourselves also with 
Western Europe. There, the cost of their labor trumps ours and they do 
tend to have high rates of unemployment for extended periods of time. The 
cost of living tends to be very high as well. However, most of the 
countries have gone through spats of socialism in their past. Hell, 
they've just been around longer that the U.S. Western European countries, 
more often than not, offer better safety nets for their citizens than the 
United States does. The same can be said for Canada as well (healthcare!). 
 It's definitely not without it's share of problems, but I'd sleep a lot 
better at night knowing that if I get a long-term illness I won't go 
bankrupt because of it. 

I too have had a miserable experience recently dealing with Indian 
technical support from Oracle. Naturally, when I voiced my concerns about 
this over the LazyDBA mailing list for Oracle I was flamed by, (drum roll 
please)...Indian DBA's on the list. But I can actually forsee a time when 
technical support jobs come back to the U.S. but software development jobs 
don't -- you don't need the cultural and English language skills to write 
code (most of the time), but you do in order to talk with someone from say 
Lubock, Texas. 

My parting words: a hundred years ago the rallying cry of the day was 
"Beware the Irish - they steal our jobs!". 


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.blu.org/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20040322/79c6d0ba/attachment.html>



BLU is a member of BostonUserGroups
BLU is a member of BostonUserGroups
We also thank MIT for the use of their facilities.

Valid HTML 4.01! Valid CSS!



Boston Linux & Unix / webmaster@blu.org